Aerosmith are true survivors again as Joe Perry gets in motorcyle accident

Joe Perry, guitar virtuoso of Aerosmith, was in a motorcycle accident Thursday near his home in Duxbury Massachusetts.

According to local police, Perry was out on his 2009 Ducati Monster 696 Thursday when a car rear-ended his bike. The 59-year-old Perry was taken to the hospital and released a few hours later. The hospital wouldn’t release any details about the nature of his injuries, but according to sources this won’t affect any of the upcoming Aerosmith summer tour.

That being said, what is up with Aerosmith? This is yet another example of the perils of a band of true survivors. They’ve defied all odds after decades of seemingly disabling situations of one kind or another. Notoriously labeled the Toxic Twins way back in the day, Perry and Aerosmith scarf-wielding singer Steven Tyler have overcome more adversity, addiction, injuries, breakups, reunions, and well documented anguish both individually and as a band than any rock and roll Hollywood movie producers could have ever gotten away with writing.

Winding up his Joe Perry Project tour, which was out on the road from September of last year through this April, Aerosmith took their show out on the world stage this Spring. And now the band is ready to head out in the US on their “Cocked Locked and Ready to Rock” tour this summer playing their first show July 23 at the Oracle Arena in Oakland California. In evidence of Aerosmith’s tireless popularity in fact, when they announced their August 14 gig in Boston’s Fenway Park, where their hometown fans snatched up tickets in a record-breaking 23 minutes.

Getting back to the motorcycle accident yesterday, the band, Steven Tyler, and Joe Perry, more importantly, have gone through decades of stops and starts and are still standing. This last year alone, Perry suffered a debilitating infection in February of ’09 as a result of his knee replacement the year before, putting that Aerosmith tour on hold. Just when they thought they had a firm foothold on things again, strutting singer Steven Tyler fell off the stage in August to a stunned packed house at their Sturgis show in South Dakota. Tour stopped dead in its tracks. Then in December ’09 we received the news that Tyler had entered rehab to get his abuse of pain medication under control, use of which started during a decade of injuries suffered.

Hey, I’ve done a bunch of interviews with Joe and Steven in the last 20 years. In the studio, on the road. They took me to Vegas with them in September of 1990 for the opening of the Hard Rock Cafe where they played under a big tent rigged up next door which held a few thousand guests. Aerosmith was at their prime. Nobody and nothing could touch these musicians who were living clean at the time, but definitely far from serene. They were on top, living life and making the music that their rabid fans old and new were eating up. Hey, some of what happened in Vegas stays in Vegas. But the band, rounded out by Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton, and Joey Kramer, had it, the midas touch.

All of which begs the musical question of the day. What price longevity?